I woke up in the middle of the night with diarrhea. After a while, I took some Imodium pills and was able to sleep again. Pretty weird this time, I didn’t eat anything strange this day.

I felt a bit sick in the morning but at least the diarrhea was over. A small breakfast and we needed to leave for the airport. The traffic was dense and we just made it in time. Flight time from Xining to Xian was 1.5 hours. One of the annoying rules here were that you still can’t use any electronic devices at take off and landing. And for some reason, these easily take 30 minutes each. At least the view on the mountains was nice most of the time.

We got picked up at the airport by professors Ji from the meeting. A very friendly guy who lived in Xian. We concluded to meet later for dinner as well.

It was much warmer than Xining but not as humid as the coastal cities at least. When arriving at the hotel, they couldn’t accept me because they didn’t have a license to accommodate foreigners. What a strange system.. We waited for Meng’s friends, who lived close by and they knew another hotel which we tried and that one had the license, but more expensive of course.

After moving in, I could finally sleep for an hour, which helped a lot.

Later we met Ji and his son and he drove us to the center, where we visited the fancy Tang dynasty Park.

The park was built about 20 years ago in memory of the Tang dynasty (approx. 7th to 9th century), which ruled in Xian as their capital and let China into a golden age.

Afterwards, we tried to find a restaurant. The traffic was crazy even late in the evening. We needed two hours for 10km. In the end, we had some nice grilled meat spits and sweet porridge made from rice and nuts in the “muslim street”. One of the famous food streets in Xian.

And afterwards, finally sleep. My stomach was alright again, but I still felt a bit sick. Hopefully I am back to normal tomorrow.